Archive

On November 22, a federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary order that temporarily blocks the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) from implementing changes to the salary basis for white collar overtime exemptions. The new salary rule, which was to become effective on December 1, 2016 would have required employers to increase exempt employees’ minimum salary from $23,660 to $47,476. The preliminary court order blocking the rule appears to apply to all public and private employers nationwide.

Find out how the judge’s order will affect the new salary rule, which was to become effective on December 1. Read this month’s Employment Law Alert.

On August 1, 2016, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed “An Act to Establish Pay Equity (the Act)” into law. The Act, which does not become effective until July 1, 2018, will require Massachusetts employers to pay men and women equally for comparable work. It also forbids employers from asking prospective employees about salary history or restricting employee discussion of pay. The Act imposes significant consequences for
violations of the law.

The Act will make it unlawful for employers to pay unequal wages to employees of different genders who perform comparable work. The Act broadly defines wages to include “all forms of remuneration for employment.”

For the past eight years, legislative efforts to reform post-employment noncompetion agreements in Massachusetts have failed. But this year, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo has signaled his support for H. 4323 and there is buzz that a non-compete bill mayland on Gov. Baker’s desk before the legislative session ends in July.

This bill entitled, “Massachusetts Noncompetition Act” has eight key components in order for a noncompetition agreement to be valid and enforceable. If H. 4323 is enacted, employers will have to quickly and carefully revise their employee restrictive agreements to comply with the new law.

The earned sick time law was approved by the voters on November 4, 2014. This law entitles employees in Massachusetts to earn and use sick time according to certain conditions, and will go into effect July 1, 2015. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has announced a transition policy under which employers who offer sufficient sick leave or paid time off to workers now have a six-month transition period in which to bring their policies into compliance with the new Massachusetts paid sick leave law.

It may come as a surprise to many private employers, who often don’t realize that the requirements of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) apply to non-unionized workplaces. However, in a recently released report the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) addresses the decisions invalidating a variety of handbooks rules found in many employer handbooks.

The question of when an employee’s compensable work for the day begins and ends is one which can be more complicated than it seems at first glance. Does an employee who checks email before driving to work have to be compensated for that time? Will an employer have to pay an employee for the time it takes to park in a remote lot and take a shuttle bus to work? The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on this subject in its recent decision in Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, No. 13-433 (December 9, 2014), where it ruled unanimously that employees did not have to be paid for the time they spent waiting to undergo and then undergoing security screenings before leaving the workplace each day. In this class action case, the employees were hourly workers who worked in two different warehouses. Their duties involved retrieving products from shelves and packaging the products for delivery to Amazon customers, and at the end of the day, were required to undergo a security screening which included removing their wallets, keys and belts, and going through a metal detector. The employees complained that they were forced to spend up to twenty-five minutes a day in this screening process, and argued that under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) they should be compensated for this time.